Cold Light

Eighteen

“So, Charlie, getting any closer, d’you think?” Skelton had both hands flat against the wall, arms straight, stretching his legs muscles till they were fully taut; last thing he wanted, running back up Derby Road, one of his hamstrings going.

Resnick shrugged. “This lad Hidden’s coming in today, all accounts he was the one went out with her most recent.”

“And the bloke Divine and Naylor checked out yesterday?” Skelton was lifting one leg with his hand, fingers around the toe of his running shoe, holding it so that the heel touched his buttock, right leg first and then the left.

“Got an alibi for all the relevant times. We’re checking it out. But what I’ve heard, I don’t fancy him, frankly.”

“The car, Charlie, that’s the key.”

Resnick nodded: as if he needed reminding.

“You’ve not come up with anything more yourself? Not got a clearer picture?”

Stubborn as a stain, the dark blur clung to the edge of Resnick’s vision, refusing to take on true color or shape, its driver a notion of a person, nothing more.

“Someone offered her a lift, Charlie, no two ways. Like as not, someone she didn’t know, met that evening, fancied her, danced with her a bit, like as not. Whisked her off with his eye to the main chance. After that, who knows?”

With any luck, Cossall and his team would have pushed through their initial inquiries by the end of the day. Matching men and cars that had been present. After that, it would be a slow process of elimination. And time, they knew, was the one thing Nancy Phelan likely didn’t have.

“There’s a press conference at three,” Skelton said. “Her parents’ll be there, too. Not what I’d’ve wanted, but nothing I could do about it. So if you think Hidden’s going to lead us anywhere, you’ll let me know as soon as you can.”

“Right.”

Skelton turned away, jogged a few paces on the spot, lifting his knees, then set out along the pavement at a tidy pace, fumes from the incoming traffic dancing round his head.

Resnick knew it was Graham Millington in the Gents’ as soon as he arrived at the door. From inside, the unmistakable sound of Millington whistling his merry way through the songs from the shows told him that his sergeant was back on duty.

“‘Phantom of the Opera,’ Graham?”

“‘Carousel’ that,” Millington said, slightly offended. “Wife and I went down to see it in London before Christmas. That Patricia Routledge-never’ve thought she’d have a voice like that, never.”

He shook himself a few more times, just to be sure, zipped up and stepped away. “That song-what is it? — ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone,’ scarce a dry eye in the house.”

“Fellow coming in this morning,” Resnick said, “Nancy Phelan’s boyfriend. Sit in with me on that, will you?”

“Right.” Checking in the mirror, Millington brushed a few flecks of white from the shoulders of his dark suit. Dandruff best not be coming back, he thought he’d seen the last of that. “Right, I’ll be there.”

And he sauntered off into the corridor, reinterpreting Rodgers and Hammerstein with an atonality that would have made Schoenberg proud.

Robin Hidden was late. Three sets of roadworks on the M6, a caravan overturned on the AIM. He was perspiring beneath his sweater and corduroy trousers when he made his way into the station, stammering when he announced his name. It was something that happened when he was feeling excited or stressed. Nancy had teased him about it, how the words he called out when they were making love came in spurts.

“Robin Hidden?”

Startled, he looked round to find a man with a roundish face and trim moustache, smart suit, and neatly knotted tie. “Detective Sergeant Millington.”

Robin didn’t know if he were supposed to shake hands with him or not.

“If you’ll just come with me.”

He followed the sergeant up two steeply winding flights of stairs and right along a corridor to an open door; behind this was an empty space, nothing that you could call a room, and beyond that another door.

“Through here, sir, if you please.”

This was more what he had been expecting, what he had seen on the television, the table, plain, pushed over towards the side wall, empty chairs on either side. What he’d been less sure of, the tape machine on a shelf at the rear, double recording decks, a six-pack of cassettes, cellophane-wrapped, waiting to be used.

“Mr. Hidden, this is Detective Inspector Resnick.”

A large man coming towards him, holding out his hand; the grip was firm and quick and almost before it was broken, the inspector and his sergeant pulling out their chairs, sitting down. Waiting for him to follow suit.

“Should be some tea along, any minute now,” said Resnick, glancing back towards the door.

“Likely need something,” Millington added pleasantly. “Long drive like that.”

“If you want to smoke …” Resnick said.

“Have to be your own, though,” Millington smiled. “Getting my resolutions in ahead of the New Year.”

“It’s all right, thanks,” Robin Hidden said. “I don’t.”

“Wise,” said Millington. “Sensible.”

There was a knock on the door and a uniformed officer came in with three cups on a tray, spoons, several sachets of sugar.

“You heard about Nancy how?” Resnick asked.

“Television news, this pub in Lancaster …”

“You’d been walking?”

“Yes, I …”

“Alone, or …?”

Robin shook his head. “With a friend.”

“Female or …”

“Male. Mark. He’s …”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” said Millington, reaching for his tea. “Not now.”

Robin tried to tear a corner of the sugar with his fingers and failed; when he used his teeth, half of the contents spilled down his arms and across the table.

“Not to worry,” Millington said. “Good for the mice.”

Robin had no idea if he were joking or not.

“Nancy,” Resnick said, “how was it you met her?” As if it were something he already knew but just couldn’t call to mind.

“The marathon …”

“Local?”

“The Robin Hood one, yes.”

“You were both running?”

“N-no. Just me. Nancy was watching. Lenton Road, where it goes through the Park. I got a cramp. Really bad. I had to stop and, well, lie down, massage my leg till it went off. N-Nancy was there, with her friend, where I dropped out.”

“You got to talking?”

“They asked me if I was okay, if I n-needed a hand.”

“And did you?”

“No, but she said, Nancy’s friend said …”

“Is that Dana?”

“Y-yes. She said if ever I wanted someone to rub in Ralgex, she knew someone who’d be happy to oblige.”

“Meaning herself?”

“M-meaning Nancy.”

“Took her up on it, then?” Millington smiled. He was doing a lot of smiling today; glad to be back at work, away from Taunton, back in tandem with the boss, enjoying it. “Kind of offer doesn’t come every day. Not when you’re already down to your shorts, I dare say.”

“I didn’t take it seriously. Thought they were just joking, having me on, but before I got back in the race, Nancy said, ‘Here,’ and gave me her phone number. Corner of her Sunday paper.”

“Stick it down your athletic support?” Millington wondered. “Keep warm.”

Robin shook his head. “In my shoe.”

Millington smiled again and looked across at Resnick, who was jotting odd words on a sheet of paper.

“Sh-shouldn’t we …?” Robin said a moment later, glancing over his shoulder at the tape machine.

“Oh, no,” Millington said. “I don’t think so. Just background this. An informal chat.”

Why, then, Robin Hidden wondered, didn’t it feel like that?

Dana had been thinking about Robin Hidden that afternoon, walking in Wollaton Park, making a series of slow circuits around the lake, scarf knotted high at her neck. His body aside-and it had seemed a good body, right from their first sight of him there had been no doubt about that-she could never see the attraction. He wasn’t especially interesting, no more than run-of-the-mill, a medium-grade job with the Inland Revenue, something at Nottingham 2. Evenings out with Robin seemed to consist of a visit to the Showcase to watch Howard’s End, then rhogon josh and a peshwari nan at the curry place on Derby Road. Better still, letting Nancy cook pork and mushroom stroganoff and eating it in front of the telly, Robin blinking behind his glasses at a program about the disappearing llamas of Peru. The only time she had seen him really come to life had been when he was planning their weekend walking in the Malvern Hills, designed to get Nancy in shape, get her prepared for the mountains to come.

Yet Nancy had seemed happy with him, content anyway, more than with the others. Eric, who, when he wasn’t whisking her round motor accessory shops on a Sunday to buy bits and pieces for his car, used to drag her off to the back rooms of pubs to listen to bands with names like Megabite Disaster. Or that weirdo Guillery, who wore combat boots and woollies his mum had knitted him and persuaded Nancy to go to horror movies, where they sat in the front row and ate popcorn. Once, according to Nancy, after they’d gone to bed together-a strange experience in itself, apparently, though she wouldn’t go into detail-Guillery had insisted on reading her his favorite bits from something called “Slugs” while he stroked her inner thigh with his big toe.

All of them, though, were preferable to that smartarse McAllister they’d had the misfortune to meet when she and Nancy had both been under the influence of too much sun and Campari. She’d even fancied him herself, God help her! A Paul Smith T-shirt and a subscription to GQ-would have been a yuppie if he’d known what it meant. A brain the size of a mangetout out of season and, though she’d never actually asked Nancy, most likely a dick to match.

A pair of Canada geese rose up from the far side of the lake, completed a lazy circle above the trees, and skidded back on to the icy water near where she stood. Hadn’t she read somewhere that they’d stopped migrating and there were council workmen in some London park going out at dawn to shoot them? She couldn’t recall if that were true or why it might be.

Nor why it was that Nancy, who was bright and certainly good-looking, anything but lacking in confidence, had so much trouble finding a man who was any kind of a match? By the time you got to her own age, you could start to say they had all been snapped up or they were gay, but Nancy, still in her twenties, seemed, nevertheless, to go from one near-disaster to another.

Maybe that was what had made Robin Hidden so appealing: the oddest thing about him was probably that he laced his hiking boots up the wrong way. Was that what Nancy had been doing? Cutting her losses and thinking of settling down? Babies and Wainwright’s guide to the White Peak with Mr. Dependable?

“Serious, then, Robin, is it? Between the two of you, you know?”

“I–I’m not sure I do.”

“Not just fooling around.”

“No.”

“True love, then?”

Robin Hidden blushed. There was half an inch of tea, cold, at the bottom of his cup and he drank it down. “I love her, yes.”

“And does she love you?” Resnick asked.

“I don’t know. I think so. But I don’t know. I think she doesn’t know herself.”

“You’d say you were close, though?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Close enough to spend holidays together, for instance?”

“Yes, I think so. C-certainly, yes. We went …”

“Not Christmas Day, though?”

“Sorry?”

“You hadn’t planned to spend it together, Christmas Day?”

“No, I was going to … usually, I went to my parents’, they live in Glossop, and Nancy, she wanted to keep D-Dana company. D-didn’t want her to be on her own.”

“You went on from Glossop up to the Lakes, then?” Millington asked. “Boxing Day?”

“Early. Yes.”

“And you drove up to your parents’ when? Christmas Eve?”

“No.”

“Not Christmas Eve?”

Robin Hidden swallowed air. “C–Christmas D-Day.”

“So you were here on Christmas Eve?” Resnick asked, leaning forward a little, not too much. “In the city?”

“Yes.”

“Strange, isn’t it,” Millington said, almost offhandedly, “you didn’t see one another, you and Nancy, Christmas Eve? Specially since you weren’t going to be together Christmas Day. Close like you were.”

Sweat trickled into Robin’s eyes and he wiped it away. “I asked her,” he said.

“To see you Christmas Eve?”

“She said no.”

“Why was that?”

Robin wiped the palms of his hands along his trouser legs.

“Why did she say no, Robin?” Resnick asked again.

“We’d h-had this, well, not row exactly, discussion, I suppose you’d say, a couple of days before. She’d said, Nancy had said, let’s go out to dinner, somewhere nice, special, my treat. It wasn’t easy, getting a booking, you know what it’s like, Christmas week, but we did, that place in Hockley, fish and vegetarian, it’s called … it’s called … stupid, I can’t remember …”

“It doesn’t matter,” Resnick said quietly, “what it’s called.”

“I suppose I was excited,” Robin said, “you know, about us. I thought she’d made up her mind. Because she hadn’t seemed certain, one time to the next, like I said before, what she felt, but I was sure, since she’d made such a thing out of going there, she was going to say she felt the same as me. I w-was p-p-positive. I said let’s go out again, Christmas Eve, r-really celebrate. She said she was sorry but she realized she wasn’t being f-fair to me, leading me on; she didn’t want to see me again, ever.”

Robin Hidden lowered his face into his hands and behind them he might have been crying. Reaching out, Resnick gave his arm a squeeze. Millington winked across at Resnick and got to his feet, signaling he was going to organize more tea.